I’m uncertain if the GPLv3 [1], or something from Creative Commons [3], like the CC-BY-SA [2] license, would be appropriate for open source hardware. I’ve come across the CERN-OHL-S [4], which appears interesting, but I’ve never encountered it in the wild, so I’m wary of it’s apparent obscurity.
References
- Type: Webpage. Title: “GNU General Public License”. Publisher: “GNU Operating System”. Accessed: 2025-09-04T21:29Z. URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html.
- Type: Webpage. Title: “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International”. Publisher: “Creative Commons”. Accessed: 2025-09-04T21:30Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en.
- Type: Webpage. Title: “About CC Licenses”. Publisher: “Creative Commons”. Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:31Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
- Type: Text. Title: “CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Strongly Reciprocal”. Publisher: “CERN”. Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:33Z. URI: https://gitlab.com/ohwr/project/cernohl/-/wikis/uploads/819d71bea3458f71fba6cf4fb0f2de6b/cern_ohl_s_v2.txt.
I’ve always liked the idea of gpl. It’s open for anyone who wants to play fair, but prevents large corporations from profiting off of your work. They can always license it from you of course, you just get to negotiate that.
Hm, I’ve come across a number of statements that the GPL isn’t well suited to hardware [1][2][3], but I’m not well enough versed in IP law to be confident in my understanding or the soundness of their rationale. Directly from the GNU Operating System:
Any material that can be copyrighted can be licensed under the GPL. GPLv3 can also be used to license materials covered by other copyright-like laws, such as semiconductor masks. So, as an example, you can release a drawing of a physical object or circuit under the GPL.
In many situations, copyright does not cover making physical hardware from a drawing. In these situations, your license for the drawing simply can’t exert any control over making or selling physical hardware, regardless of the license you use. When copyright does cover making hardware, for instance with IC masks, the GPL handles that case in a useful way. [4]
I’m not really sure.
References
- Type: Comment. Author: “K900_” (“u/K900_”). Publisher: [Type: Post. Title: “Can everything be GPL”. Author: “cyfyff” (“u/cyfyff”). Publisher: [“Reddit”. “r/linux”]. Published: 2019-05-29T04:50:43.079Z. URI: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/buaffg/can_everything_be_gpl/.]. Published: 2019-05-29T04:53:55.513Z. Accessed: 2025-09-04T22:37Z. URI: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/buaffg/comment/ep97hmd/.
[…] The GPL is also a terrible license for hardware IP (see Intel/ARM), for many reasons […]
- Type: Comment. Author: “bobc”. Publisher: [Type: Post. Title: “Using the (L)GPL as an open-source hardware license?”. Author: “mondalaci”. Publisher: “KiCad INFO”. Published: 2015-12-23T18:41:37Z. URI: https://forum.kicad.info/t/using-the-l-gpl-as-an-open-source-hardware-license/1925/1.]. Published: 2015-12-23T10:05:03.944Z. Accessed: 2025-09-04T22:42Z. URI: https://forum.kicad.info/t/using-the-l-gpl-as-an-open-source-hardware-license/1925/2.
[…] In a nutshell, GPL (and all other software licenses) rely on software being something that can be subject to copyright. In general hardware can not be copyrighted, because copyright is only granted to creative or artistic works, but with some weird exceptions like software, IC masks, yacht designs (!). “Useful articles or utility works” are not generally subject to copyright, but some powerful industrial lobbies got some concessions, as otherwise a software “work” would not be protected under IP laws, although specific software algorithms can be patented. […] tldr; use GPL or LGPL, CC-BY-SA, MIT, etc as you like, as a statement of intent, but realise they have little legal teeth. Other OSHW oriented licenses are equally ineffective to protect or control the use of electronic or hardware designs.
- Type: Post. Title: “Using GPL for hardware is a bad idea”. Author: "BeagleFury ". Publisher: “RepRap”. Published: 2010-03-29T1500. Accessed: 2025-09-04T22:46Z. URI: https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?33,40874.
[…] This in my opinion is a critical flaw… If you want the hardware to be open, first and foremost, you need a license that actually covers hardware. I’m not sure why do people cling to GPL when it does not cover hardware components, (If you search for GPL hardware, one of the top items will be Richard Stahlman saying this same thing – GPL and hardware do not make sense.) […]
- Type: Webpage>Text. Title: “Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses”. Publisher: “GNU Operating System”. Accessed: 2025-09-04T22:51Z. URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLHardware. Location: §“Can I use the GPL to license hardware?”.
apertus made the axoim copyleft with GPL3 : https://www.apertus.org/axiom
- Type: Comment. Author: “K900_” (“u/K900_”). Publisher: [Type: Post. Title: “Can everything be GPL”. Author: “cyfyff” (“u/cyfyff”). Publisher: [“Reddit”. “r/linux”]. Published: 2019-05-29T04:50:43.079Z. URI: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/buaffg/can_everything_be_gpl/.]. Published: 2019-05-29T04:53:55.513Z. Accessed: 2025-09-04T22:37Z. URI: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/buaffg/comment/ep97hmd/.
It’s open for anyone who wants to play fair, but prevents large corporations from profiting off of your work.
It was just explained to me by many on Lemmy that not just GPL but the actual definition of Open Source requires that you allow large corporations to profit off your work.
I was extremely surprised to find that out. For decades I thought only the BSD license allowed corporations to profit from your work. It turns out that you can’t even technically call your product Open Source if you don’t allow corporations to exploit your work.
I thought it was crazy but I was dogpiled with links showing I was wrong.
You may find a better answer in the distinction between “profit” and “exploit”.
Does GPL allow a corporation to profit off your work? Yes it does.
Does it allow them to exploit your work? In my opinion, no.
Compared to something like MIT which in my opinion lets them both profit and exploit you.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer by any means, just a GPL advocate.
Imo profit without compensation is exploitation. If you are paid a salary and the owner sells your burger for more, that’s profit. If you make a burger and the owner sells it for profit without paying you anything, that’s exploitation.
As I just found out, as bizarre as it seems, the definition of OpenSource requires that your work can be exploited by large corporations.
The Lemmy users in the thread were angry with a developer because he didn’t want his program exploited by Google/Microsoft/whomever.
Where are you hearing this?? The FSF has an entire licence dedicated to limiting commercial use of your software (the a-gpl), gpl-3 is also much more limiting which us why linus doesnt use it for the kernal, but few would call gpl-3 not open source. Open source means people can modify and redistribute your code, theres nothing preventing you from saying “This code is free (as in beer and freedom). Keep it that way)”
The reason for the creation of AGPL is not “limiting” commercial use. It’s there, so that a company commercially using your AGPL project is also required to publish its changes under AGPL, even if the only way they “distribute” the software is as a Application Service Procider (SaaS company). Because under regular GPL, this case wasn’t covered, so big companies could use your code, modify it, offer it as a SaaS product and NOT publish their changes unter a free license.
AGPL specifically exists, so the rules around commercial SaaS use are clear – so I’d argue it’s the opposite of “limiting commercial use”.
Sorry yea bad wording on my part, I was intending “limiting” to refer to stopping companys from profiting off of your work without limits (controbuting back to the comminity)
It was in this thread here:
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/21153303
A company was calling their product Open Source because they published the source code and allowed anyone to modify it. But they didn’t want Google taking their work for free. Lemmy users called them scammers/open source washers because they didn’t want their work exploited by large corporations.
I still find it weird that Open Source defenders are adamant that you must allow large corporations to exploit your work or you are a fraud. I had no idea.
Personally I don’t subscribe to that. I’m sure Linus and Torvalds disagree, but I don’t care. I remember reading about the corejs developer begging people to donate because he couldn’t afford food, meanwhile react, angular, and thus every major company depended on it. Story happens too often. I wish we could be completely open, but it just gets exploited
That’s part of what FOSS people mean by free/libre. The user (which may be a company) is not restricted in what they do with the software and source code. If it’s copyleft, then the only restriction is share-alike/that it remains libre and open. So that includes the right to make a profit.
There are non-FOSS licences you can use if you only want non-commercial use, or want to apply various restrictions whilst still keeping things foss-like (in the sense that most people can e.g. fork it and generally do what they want with it, but in some scenarios/to some users it will not be foss), but they aren’t considered FOSS.
I only do BSD, now.
I used to do GPL, and I still support free software and everyone’s ability to modify and extend projects for new and better purposes.
When some South Koreans were jailed for upholding my license terms when they spotted their employer violating them, and the FSF did little and less to help them avoid jail - which happens sometimes in Korea - I knew the GPL was still a good idea but in practice it exposes people to risk.
I can’t have that happen for my software again.
Can you expand on this Korea story? That’s not really making sense but I’m curious.
I presume that their employers just had terms that essentially gave the whole IP to the employer. And GPL is conflicting that, especially if they were producing the code using employers equipment, which essentially makes all the code to belong to employer. At the same time, GPL maintains the IP on the author of the code.
Not a lawyer, though I heard that some far-eastern companies have copied the US policymaking, which allows full separation of IP from the author.
Wow. I also prefer BSD or ISC but why would korea jail people for using GPL!
Licences are a nightmare to properly understand, I just find someone more knowledgeable than me and listen to them.
Also, OP tell me your conclusion for best hardware licence when you get there.
imo i wouldn’t overlook CERN too much due to apparent obscurity. that’s CERN as in WWW & LHC.
plus it’s specifically designed for hw, unlike most of the others which are more likely to lean sw centric?
if your hw is very sw-heavy you could even consider splitting the license types between firmware and hardware if it helps.
not saying what the right choice is for you, just the apparent obscurity i think isn’t such a big issue. but welcome correction.
I prefer CERN or CC.
The big question is how copyleft do you want to license it.
Which means, to what extend are the people building on top of your work allowed to keep their improvements and all downstream improvements for themselves and other future rights holder they might sell it to.
A copyleft license prevents someone from making an improvement and then treating the entire thing as their private property but also stop anyone else from making that improvement on your stuff and continuing progress.
So copyleft is, do you allow future devs building on your things to “pull the ladder up” on everyone else that come after them.
I’d go with no. But that means you cede control of it for yourself as well if you start including other people’s improvements into your design, unless you make them sign dual license “contributor license agreement” so that you can have both a private commercial right to the entire thing while also giving copyleft version to the community.
License Type Example License(s) Can someone “pull the ladder up” after building on your work? Can you integrate their improvements freely? Notes 🟥 Strong Copyleft CERN-OHL-S, GPLv3 ❌ No — downstream must open their changes ✅ Yes — everyone must share improvements Keeps the community free, but restricts proprietary use 🟧 Weak Copyleft CERN-OHL-W, LGPL ⚠️ Limited — changes to original must be open, but addons can be closed ✅ Mostly — improvements to original are open Allows extensions/plugins to be proprietary 🟨 Permissive CERN-OHL-P, Solderpad, MIT ✅ Yes — downstream can close everything ❌ No — unless you get permission, you can’t use their closed changes Maximizes adoption, but allows ladder-pulling 🟦 Dual Licensing GPL + commercial, or CLA-based ⚠️ Controlled — you allow copyleft for the public, but retain rights for commercial licensing ✅ Yes — you retain full rights via CLA Good if you want community contributions and a commercial option ⚪ Documentation-only (CC-BY, etc.) CC-BY, CC-BY-SA ⚠️ Depends — not designed for functional hardware, may not protect source ❌ Unclear — source availability not enforceable Use only for manuals, not functional designs
